Despite a challenging housing market, Rightmove, the platform for estate agents, has reported growth in both revenue and profit. This is despite people spending less time looking for houses due to rising mortgage rates last year.
The company revealed that it had increased its revenue by approximately 10 percent to £364.3 million.
This was primarily due to charging estate agent customers more to use the site. Pre-tax profit also saw an increase of 7.7 percent, reaching £259. 8 million.
Rightmove reported a nine percent rise in average revenue per advertiser. Last year, the company received around £1,431 per month from its customers.
It anticipates that the average advertiser will pay an additional £100-£110 this year.
Interestingly, potential house buyers, who estate agents target via Rightmove, actually spent less time on the platform. In total, people spent about 15.4 billion minutes on the site over the year. This equates to roughly 257 million hours, or 29,000 years.
This is a decrease from the 16.3 billion minutes spent on the site in 2022.
House sales in the UK also fell last year, dropping from 1.2 million in 2022 to 1million in 2023. However, Zoopla predicted earlier this week that sales would rebound to 1.1 million in 2024.
This downturn coincided with a rise in mortgage prices as the Bank of England increased its base interest rate in an attempt to control inflation.
Rightmove also experienced a slight drop in membership, with numbers falling by one percent to 18,785, a reduction of 229. The company expects customer numbers to continue to fall this year due to ongoing economic uncertainty.
“In a year of economic uncertainty, consumers continued to trust Rightmove as the place to turn to help them make their move,” said chief executive Johan Svanstrom.
“Customers were able to choose from an expanded, more sophisticated product suite, to continue to drive business results in a changing market environment.”
He added: “We reshaped our strategy during 2023, setting out a plan to further digitise the property sector, expand our business, stretch our brand and accelerate the financial performance long term.”
“We are looking forward to 2024 with confidence and to delivering further value to all stakeholders on our platform, progressing the ambitious Rightmove strategy.”
